She thought of calling Bruno and telling him that his secret was out, but she had an irrational fear, now, that perhaps the club’s owners were having her phone tapped, and she didn’t dare.
By the time she arrived at the seedy little alley where the side door was hidden, Poppy’s legs would hardly carry her.
One of the bouncers responded to her faint-hearted
knocking, and took her upstairs without a word, clearly expecting her.
Inside the office, Allyson sat on her side of the desk, reading the newspaper, it seemed. Poppy didn’t see Emma at first until suddenly she noticed her, standing in shadows with her nose in the corner. She was wearing a pair of leather hotpants and a corset, pretty odd attire for this time of the morning, Poppy thought.
Allyson put down her paper and glared.
Poppy cowered.
‘One day on the job and already you’re here in front of me,’ said Allyson with a sigh. ‘Please don’t tell me I’ve made a mistake, Poppy. I don’t like mistakes.’
‘I didn’t mean any— I’m sorry.’
‘All right. Sit down. Emma’s told me all about last night.’
‘Has she?’
‘Yes, and it was very good of her to come and help you out with your first punter. Pity he turned out to be the wrong sort. I can forgive you, in your inexperience, for not realising sooner, but Emma should really know better.’
‘She was only trying to help me.’ Poppy whispered.
‘I appreciate that, but she was indiscreet and she has to be punished. And you, my dear, can take a lesson from witnessing her punishment. And, for future reference, you don’t tell anyone anything about this place. Got that? You can lie, you can evade, you can tell them what you like, as long as it isn’t the truth. I thought one of the other girls would have made that clear, but they obviously had their eye off the ball last night.’
Allyson got up and leant over the desk, taking Poppy’s chin between her finger and thumb.
‘You do understand me, don’t you?’
Poppy nodded, a restricted little shiver of a nod.
‘Right. Now watch and learn what happens to silly girls who can’t keep their mouths shut.’
Allyson opened her desk drawer, and shunted everything that lay on the surface down into it, until only the polished veneer remained. Then she took out a rolled-up padded mat, which she laid out flat on the desktop.
‘Here, slut,’ she said, patting it, and Emma came out of her corner and climbed up on to the mat on all fours. While Allyson and Poppy watched, she laid her head down against the padding and pushed out her backside. The leather shorts were so brief that they exposed a large portion of her bottom, the edges of the cane welts peeking out, now a purplish pink colour.
‘You’ve been disgracing yourself this week,’ said Allyson softly, running a frighteningly manicured magenta nail along one of the welts. ‘Mr Sands had to cane you for saying too much, and now you’re in the same position again, only two days later. I think we should keep you in a ball gag, my dear, don’t you?’
‘If you wish, ma’am.’
‘Yes, I do wish.’
She opened the lower drawer again and took out a length of black elastic with a bright red rubber ball in the middle of it. Poppy watched, half-enthralled and half-horrified, as Allyson tied it around Emma’s head, pushing the ball between her teeth.
‘You can wear that for work tonight and your customer will know you’ve been a naughty blabbermouth. And I hope he’ll spank you all the harder for it.’
Emma said nothing. Well, how could she?
Allyson returned to her rear and reached underneath to
loosen the leather hotpants. When she pulled them down over Emma’s bum, Poppy saw that she was naked underneath. Her pale bottom wore nothing but the silvery purple streaks left by the cane.
‘Hmm, how are these feeling, I wonder?’ Allyson asked, squeezing and pinching the welts with cruel satisfaction. Emma couldn’t answer verbally, but she twisted this way and that, gasping through her gag. Presumably they still hurt, then. Poppy grimaced in sympathy.
‘Yes, I see that face, madam,’ said Allyson, turning her attention to the younger girl. ‘You don’t want to be in this position, do you? So make sure you’re careful in future because, believe me, I wouldn’t think twice about pulling down your knickers and giving you the hiding of a lifetime. In fact, it would be a pleasure. So think on that. Right. What am I going for today?’
Allyson stepped back, chin in hand, contemplating Emma’s vulnerable backside.
‘Got to make it hurt, of course. And I know this girl, Poppy, I know what she can take. She loves to be whipped, so I’ve got to take her past that and make it count. What would you recommend, love? Hmm?’
‘Me? You’re asking me?’
‘That’s right, sweetheart. You heard me. So?’
Allyson folded her arms, waiting.
Poppy could not, for the life of her, imagine how she would punish somebody. The thought had never even occurred to her. And when it was somebody who was taking the rap for her own silly mistake?
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell you what, I’ll get a few bits and pieces out and you can choose.’
Allyson opened the drawer for a third time, grabbed a handful of items and dropped them with a clatter over the desk in front of Emma’s head.
Stealing forward, Poppy inspected a multi-stranded flogger, a spoon-shaped wooden paddle, a heavy strap with a handle and a purple fibreglass cane.
‘While you’re making up your mind …’ said Allyson, and Poppy almost jumped out of her skin, as a loud crack reverberated around the room, closely followed by a volley of repeats. Allyson had begun smacking Emma’s thighs with her hand, and Poppy jumped back as Emma began to twitch and breathe heavily through the gag.
Poppy saw that she had better hurry up if she was not going to prolong Emma’s suffering unnecessarily. Without thinking more, she snatched up the paddle and held it out to Allyson, who stopped smacking and smiled.
‘Ooh, you little bitch,’ she said. ‘This one really hurts.’
‘Look,’ blurted Poppy, ‘this isn’t fair. I wish you’d punish me instead. It was my fault.’
Allyson put down the paddle and laughed, long and low. She reached out and stroked Poppy’s hair from her face, making Poppy tremble.
‘What a little sweetie,’ she said. ‘What a brave girl. So you think you deserve a paddling too, do you?’
‘It wasn’t Emma’s fault,’ whispered Poppy, electrified by the situation. Her head was light with fear, and yet a huge exhilaration welled inside her. She had stepped off the edge of a cliff.
‘Was it your fault, Poppy?’
Poppy nodded.
‘Do you want Auntie Allyson to punish you for it?’
She didn’t know how to answer. She knew she didn’t want
Emma taking what was hers by right but, on the other hand, she was hardly desperate to give Allyson license to do what she wanted with her. God knew what that might involve.
‘I don’t think it’s fair on Emma,’ she quavered. ‘If she takes all the blame.’
‘You’re a good girl,’ said Allyson. ‘What a good girl you are. Now just sit back down, sweetie, and watch. I know you don’t want Emma taking all the blame, but she’s the experienced one here and she must be punished, long and hard. That’s it. Sit tight. And learn.’
Allyson gripped the paddle by its rubber-coated handle and tapped it a few times against Emma’s bottom. Emma moaned in a kind of pre-emptive despair, as if knowing how she was going to feel. She probably did, thought Poppy.
‘Now then, Emma, you’re going to get properly paddled on your bare bum, and Poppy is going to watch every single second of it. So make sure you behave yourself and keep nice and still, or you’ll get extras with the lexan cane.’
Poppy cried out at the first stroke, even though Emma did not.
Allyson glanced over at her. ‘Sympathetic, eh? What are you like when they actually touch you? Don’t answer that. I’d like to find out for myself.’
Poppy pressed her lips together then, determined to draw no more attention to herself. She watched dully as Allyson plied the paddle, over and over, with hard, fast splats, to Emma’s already punished bottom. She saw how Emma screwed up her face and chewed on the rubber gag, how she clenched her fists and stiffened her back and tried not to react. She was so strong. Poppy was sure she couldn’t have taken half of what Emma did without leaping up and clutching her buttocks.
‘Plenty of hard swats: got to drive the lesson home,’
muttered Allyson, single-minded at her work. ‘Come here, Poppy, and look at how red her arse is now.’
Poppy obliged, and was duly impressed at the angry crimson flush covering Emma’s rounded cheeks down to mid-thigh. The cane welts were swelling up in the midst of the redness, darker than they had been before.
It must be agony, thought Poppy, and she rubbed her thighs together a little, feeling the dampness at their apex.
‘What do you think? Has she had enough?’
‘Yes, yes, I think so,’ said Poppy.
‘You’re soft-hearted, aren’t you, love? You couldn’t do my job. When you’re in charge of a gaff like this, with sly little sluts like Emma on your books, you have to be tough. It’s dog-eat-dog, this game.’
‘Oh. Is it?’ Poppy, way out of her depth, simply nodded sympathetically.
‘You have to understand that girls like Emma need to be reined in. They need reminding. Hard. And often.’ Allyson accompanied these words with driving swats that flattened Emma’s red buttocks. ‘You’ll notice that she hasn’t even yelled out yet.’
‘I know. I would have.’
Allyson turned and smiled indulgently.
‘Would you? Yeah, I’ll bet. So look, Poppy, I’m going to offer you a choice here.’
‘A choice?’ Poppy swallowed. Something in Allyson’s eyes was too rapt, too rapacious, for comfort.
‘Yeah.’
Allyson put down the paddle and picked up the purple cane. She held it out to Poppy.
‘You can give Emma six with this, and you’ll have to make it hard. Or you can take them yourself.’
Oh God, oh God.
If she’d picked any other implement, the choice would have been clear and easy. She’d have stood in for Emma like a shot. But the cane …
She looked again at Emma’s bottom. She wanted to touch it, to feel the evidence of her suffering, so that she could make a properly informed choice. She wanted to ask Emma what she thought. But of course, Emma was in no state to express an opinion.
So she took the cane and ran her fingers along it. Then she bent it. It was made of some indestructible, shatter-proof material that would fall like a thin brand on the skin.
She couldn’t use it on Emma. She couldn’t use it on anyone.
‘I can’t cane Emma,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t, when it’s me who …’
Allyson nodded.
‘Brave girl,’ she said, and she rubbed her shoulder with awkward approbation. ‘And I think you need this. If you’re going to be one of us.’
Poppy raised her eyes to Allyson. That hard face, that professional-bitch attitude. Did she want to be one of them? She wasn’t sure about that, but she did want to bend to Allyson’s will, to feel the punishment she had earned. Allyson was strong, and strong people made her feel safe, no matter what dodgy business they might be tangled up in.
‘Everything’ll be all right, love, once you’ve got your stripes,’ Allyson said.
She smacked Emma’s bum loudly.
‘Down you get,’ she ordered.
Emma clambered stiffly off the desk and stood on the carpet, head down, looking as if she wanted to hide the ball gag from sight. Her leather hotpants were still around her ankles.
‘Get in the corner, slut, now.’
Emma shuffled to the corner she had occupied before, and stayed there.
Poppy couldn’t have told anything from her face. She didn’t look distraught, nor did she look happy. She was a perfect blank. Had she learned that? Did Allyson insist upon it?
‘Right, Poppy, let’s have your jeans off.’
She put the cane down on the desk and Poppy’s heart began to lurch chaotically in her ribcage. She looked at the door, one eye on escape, but she knew there was none.
Why not, though?
Surely she could just say, ‘Sorry, but I’ll pass,’ and leave. Nothing was stopping her. It would mean losing the job, but at this stage, the job was low on her list of priorities, a long way after survival and sex.
Poppy unzipped and dropped her jeans, then realised that she would have difficulty pulling them over her boots.
‘It’s OK,’ said Allyson. ‘You can leave them like that.’
She pointed at the chair Poppy had been sitting on.
‘Bend over it, hands gripping the sides of the seat, bum up.’
Poppy obeyed, feeling the cotton of her knickers stretch over her rump.
Allyson walked up behind her and caressed her bottom cheeks, sending furious, itchy heat to her pussy.
‘Miss Sensible-Knickers,’ she teased. ‘Pack of seven, was it?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, ma’am?’ Was that what Emma had called her?
‘Good. Fast learner. Let’s see what you learn from this. Hold tight.’
At least Allyson wasn’t going to make her take her knickers down, thought Poppy. They might give her a tiny bit of protection.
But when the cane swished down and bit into her, she realised how misguided this assumption had been.
She leapt to her feet, clutching her behind, wailing in pain and confusion.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’ said Allyson, with steely satisfaction. ‘Five more. Back down now.’
‘I can’t,’ pleaded Poppy.
‘No? Then you know what you have to do. Emma!’
‘No! No, I’ll try.’
Even as she bent back down, Poppy wondered if she’d gone mad. That first stroke had been purest agony. Five more couldn’t possibly be tolerated.
She didn’t take them well.
She jumped up each time, and even made for the door at one point, but something kept bringing her back, something kept her bent over the chair, waiting for another bar of exquisite pain to be laid across her bottom.
Marks of war. Marks of shame. Marks of pride.
It felt like a rite of passage.
‘That’s five. One more, sweetheart. You’re doing well. I didn’t take more than three, my first time. And Em screamed the place down, didn’t you, darling? Oh, sorry, I forgot. Anyway. Speaking of Emma – come out of the corner, love. I want you to give the sixth stroke.’